Eye of the Storm
by BaldiDaughterChevy
Summary: Tag to Everybody Loves a Clown.


**Just watched Everybody Loves a Clown and the end scene with Dean beating up the Impala isn't any easier to watch the second time around.**

 **But I loved what Sam said to Dean right before that and it made me think about what they both must have been going through.**

 **This is just a bit of monologue from Sam's POV.**

 **His thoughts right before that final scene in ELAC.**

Most kids grow up with some kind of permanence. They have friends and backyards.

The average family has a house or an apartment or a trailer or a cozy refrigerator box or some form of permanent address.

We had the backseat of the Impala and, if we were lucky, cheap motels off the interstate.

Most kids have a parent who is home more than a couple times a month.

We had a dad who came back mostly drunk and covered in gore and expected his children (child, it was always Dean) to play field medic with a bag of dwindling supplies lifted from a hospital.

Most kids learn to play sports. We learned to fight evil.

Most kids don't believe in monsters. We hunted them down.

In case you haven't noticed we aren't most families.

We still don't have the easy comforts that most people take for granted. Whatever constants we have in our lives have to fit in a suitcase or the trunk of our car.

I own a collection of books; Treasure Island, Journey to the Center of the Earth, some Bradbury and Asimov. Small, packable, paperbacks I picked up here and there at used bookstores.

Dean bought me The Lord of the Rings trilogy for my 10th birthday and I preserve those novels carefully, like some would cherish a family bible.

I have a few sturdy, old, Moleskine notebooks filled with my own attempts at writing. Bits and thoughts that I put down over the years, most of it too delicate to show Dean without being punched and called "Samantha".

I have a Carhartt jacket that magically still smells like mom and makes me feel like it's safe to sleep at night.

I have a Stanford t-shirt that Jess bought me at the college bookstore after teasing me that all my clothes looked like worn out hand-me-downs. (That's exactly what they were)

I was wearing it under my layers the night she died and it's one of the few things that didn't turn to ash in the fire.

But mostly, I have my brother Dean.

He's my granite rock, my shelter from the dark storm of our life.

He carried me out of my burning nursery when I was an infant and told me bedtime stories when I was a frightened, little kid.

He made sure I stayed a kid for as long as he possibly could, even when it meant bearing the brunt of heavy secrets.

He kept me alive after hunts went badly; sewing me up, setting my bones, calming me down.

He helped me get my first girlfriend, then brought me a beer and managed to make me laugh through my tears when she broke my heart.

He's kept me standing these last few months after Jessica.

After so many years watching out for me Dean knows me inside and out.

I can't hide anything from him so I've mostly given up trying.

But sometimes my closed book of a brother forgets I know him too.

I know how to see through the iron wall he builds around himself. I know the clench of his jaw when he forces back emotion, the hunched tightness of his shoulders, the controlled storm beneath the calm surface of his green eyes. It might be invisible to outsiders but I know when my brother suffers.

And he is suffering now. My rock is crumbling.

Through the years Dean has found his own meager comforts, his constants in our shifting life.

He has that leather jacket from dad, a little big but worn in all the right places. On his right hand he has a pure, silver ring that he bought at a junk shop years ago. Another precaution he thought up. "Shake hands with a suspicious stranger and watch for the flinch, Sammy." He'd said when he found it.

He wears the amulet I gave him for Christmas all those years ago so constantly that it's become one with him. He doesn't take it off to sleep. I don't think he even showers without it.

And of course he has the Impala. That car is as much a part of him as his arms and legs. She's a steel substitute for a family pet, loyal and strong and always there when he needs her.

Except now. When he needs her most. The sleek, black frame that once glided down the road like a hell-bent shadow is now a twisted mess. Mangled and sick she lays there, while Dean tends to her with tough yet gentle hands. Putting every ounce of his broken self into repairing his car.

I think to myself, if I could see inside my brother's head it would probably look a lot like the Impala. A shattered tangle of bent parts and wrecked pieces.

It's been two weeks since dad died and one of my brother's footholds has fallen to dust.

God knows Dean could never lean on our father-dad was usually the one doing the leaning-but my brother has always been one to stand tallest when he was holding someone up.

And now, bereft of his reason to be strong, he's breaking down at last.

Me and that car are the only constants he has left. But the car is a mess and so am I. I don't know if I can help him. I'm not used to being the healer and I'm not used to hurting without Dean there to make it better.

I don't need him to cry on my shoulder. I don't expect that. I'd have to throw some holy water on him if he ever approached that extreme level of chick-flick moment. That just wouldn't be my brother.

But I want him to know that he's not alone and if that means I have to be the strong presence for once in my life than I will try my hardest.

In the last bit of the evening I head out to the graveyard of cars that is Bobby's lawn and find Dean right where I knew he would be-with his baby.

I approach him carefully, like I always do these days. Like he's a wounded animal.

He looks up at me and the guarded pain in him is almost more than I can take.

"You were right". I begin.

~The end~

 **I hope that wasn't too bad. I wrote it in a hurry so please excuse any mistakes.**

 **Reviews make me incredibly happy.**


End file.
